The Directors of Republic Gold Limited today advise that the Company’s drilling contractor, OME Drilling Pty Limited, has commenced work on the Company’s initial drilling programme in the Hodgkinson Basin. Approximately 80 RC and diamond holes will be drilled for a total of 5,000 metres. This will be the first significant drilling programme in the area in almost a decade.

The programme will commence at the company’s 75%-owned Northcote Project, with drilling at the Pinnacles, Atric and Tregoora Projects to follow. The design of the drilling programme follows a successful three-day field visit by the Company’s consulting structural geologist, Dr Steve King and the collation and review of the extensive historical drilling database that exists for the Northcote Project.

This review of the Northcote database confirmed the extensive nature of past drilling and highlighted a number of intersections that lead the Directors to believe that the deposit has the grade potential to meet the Company’s expectations. Two of the best intersections drilled in the 1980’s are 1 metre at 238 g/t Au and 61 metres at 7.0 g/t Au, the latter drilled down-dip and indicating excellent continuity of grade.

The review also confirmed the need for the drilling programme to address several previously known shortcomings in the existing Northcote database. Consequently, once this drilling programme is completed – expected to be within 2 months – the Company anticipates being able to upgrade and increase the Northcote resource. Currently the Northcote project contains an inferred resource of 147,600 ounces at an average grade of 2.8 g/t gold.

Yours faithfully

John Kelly
Managing Director
Republic Gold Limited

Note: The information in this report that relates to drilling intercepts, mineral resources and ore reserves is based on information collated by John Peter Kelly, a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy who has a minimum of five years experience in the estimation, assessment and evaluation of mineral resources and ore reserves. John Peter Kelly has significant experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 1999 edition of the “Australasian Code for Reporting of Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves”.

For more information, please contact: Greg Barns on 0419 691 846 or John Kelly on 0418 577 759.